Posted on 02/01/2004 4:41:10 AM PST by quidnunc
If David Kay is right about what his weapons inspection teams have found — or rather not found — in Iraq, it's clear the Bush administration was wrong about Iraq's programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. Kay, the former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, says there are no large chemical and biological stockpiles likely to be found, and that Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program had been literally buried. While he also concluded that Iraq had been aggressively moving to develop longer-range ballistic missiles, had kept its biological-weapons research program alive and tried to restart its nuclear program in 2001, the overall picture is far from the robust set of WMD programs suggested by one senior administration official after another in the year leading up to the war.
Critics of the war and the administration have been quick to use Kay's statements as evidence that the White House jury-rigged intelligence estimates to support its policy of getting rid of Hussein, and hyped what intelligence there was on Iraq's programs. But the Bush administration relied on virtually the same intelligence estimates that the Clinton administration used during the U.N.-inspection crisis in late 1997. As far as hype goes, it would be hard for anyone to beat then-Defense Secretary William S. Cohen's appearance on national television, holding up a five-pound sack of sugar and announcing that a similar amount of Iraqi produced anthrax was enough to kill half the population of Washington.
So, who is at fault? Right now, it looks like U.S. intelligence simply didn't do its job. Not that the job was easy; Iraq was a virtual police state, and Hussein was adept at uncovering plots against him and hiding his own plans. Remember, after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, we were surprised to discover that Iraq's nuclear weapons program was just months from producing a bomb — not the five to 10 years that U.S. intelligence had thought. The reality is we had no high-level Iraqi spies who could tell us what was going on; moreover, Hussein appears to have been good at feeding false information through double agents and our high-tech collection systems. With no new information of note, it is no surprise that the analytic side of the intelligence community — a bureaucracy like any bureaucracy, with its own inertia — didn't change what it thought about these programs from what it had learned in the early 1990s.
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(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
1. President Bush has succeeded in waging the War on Terror in the heart of the terrorists' home territory, rather than in the United States, where the terrorists had intended to wage it.Incidently, he removed a brutal dictatorship and liberated the Iraqi people, but that also was not the reason for the removal of the regime of Saddam Tikriti from power.2. He has established a military presence in terrorist territory from which to combat them successfully.
3. He removed a government that served as a support center for the terrorists.
4. He has successfully responded to the terrorists' attack on the continental United States by taking offensive action, and he--so far--has prevented a second attack.
5. The doctrine that he proclaimed has already lead to the capitulation of Lybia and has other regimes that support these terrorists on the defensive.
So far he has been gloriously victorious.
The carping about "weapons of mass destruction", the obviously false charges that "Bush lied", etc., et al., ad nauseum, and any other red herring they can think of, by Democrats and "Liberals" and their spokespersons in The Democrat Propaganda Machine (otherwise known as "The Mainstream Newsmedia") is nothing more than anti-Bush propaganda.
Well excuuuussseee me! Personally, I think the ongoing R&D program is MORE important than the presence of actual stockpiles, as it gives the proof that the INTENT of SoDamned Insane was to obtain and use WMD's.
You missed the real one: "He removed a government that had an active procurement/R&D program to obtain WMD's, and which intended to use and/or distribute same in the future."
The current seven Dem candidates will help to guarantee Bush's election.
;-)
Agree 100%. I mean, it might make the difference of whether WMD would be used against us in one year or five years. Why is one more acceptable than another.
Saddam made explicit threats to the US before the invasion of Kuwait in Aug '90. During the (in)famous April Glaspie meeting (in I believe, July of '90) Saddam is recorded as saying:
If you use pressure, we will deploy pressure and force. We know that you can harm us although we do not threaten you. But we too can harm you. Everyone can cause harm according to their ability and their size. We cannot come all the way to you in the United States, but individual Arabs may reach you. [My italics]It's clear that Saddam is refering to his conventional forces when he speaks of "not threating" us, not coming all the way to the US. The transcript can be read at this link. The quote is about a third of the way through the transcript, under the heading, Protecting the Oil Flow
"Individual Arabs may reach you". Pretty chilling when you remember how "individual Arabs" reached us on 9/11.
Whom will the terrorists vote for? Not George W. Bush--that's for sure! ~Happy2BMe)I like it too. I wish I could take the credit, but it all belongs to Happy2BMe, who gave me permission to use it as a tagline."LOVE YOUR TAG LINE
SEMPER FI
POST YOUR TAG LINE EVERYWHERE
IT WILL GUARENTEE RE ELECTION"
By the way, does anyone know how to make bumperstickers or have them made? Some of these taglines would make good bumperstickers.
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